- Now we've taken a look at both Adobe presetsand third-party presets, but you could take advantageof presets to save your own work.After all, once you come up with a great combinationof filters or effects or perhaps a keyframed animation,you can save that as your own presetand then recall it later to save a bunch of timeor jumpstart your process.Let's go back to the project panel here,and we'll jump forward to this sequenceand fit it into the window.All right, in this case, I have applieda series of effects to an adjustment layer.

You see it's creating a spot color effectas well as a subtle tint.Well, let's select that.I'll press U + U to see all of the user-modified properties.And it looks like the Leave Color effect has been applied,plus a photo filter and some curves.Well, let's go up here to the Effects Controls,and we'll see all that.What I'd like to do is store all of this.To select a property, just Command click on a Macor Control click on a PC to choose each effect.

Now you don't have to choose everything,but in this case, I did choose all three effects.And I could select Animation, Save Animation Preset.You'll notice that it takes us to the default locationhere inside of After Effects.Well, let's not overwrite any of the system ones,but rather go to that default positionfor the user-created ones.So I'll go to My Documents folder, in this case on a Mac,sort alphabetically here, jump into Adobe,go to the current version I'm working withto User Presets, and I'm going to make a new folder.

Let's call this Grades as in color grading,underscore my initials RH.I'll give this a name.And I'm going to call this Cool Blue Spot,as in a spot color effect and a cool blue color grade,and click Save.Now it's saved as a preset.Okay, let's try it out.We'll jump over here to another sequence.

In this case, we're going to do that same effect.Let's fit this.We'll do a quick chroma key here,so let's use some of those presets we used earlier.I'll type in the word key and now what I want to dois apply the green blur,and that keying preset for Keylight.Drag that over.And I like that, but I want to turn onthe chatter reduction.That works pretty well.

All right, well, let's select the Spill Suppression,the Key Cleaner, the Keylight Effect,and the Green Channel Blur,and save that as a new preset.Save Animation Preset.And I'm going to go ahead and put thisinto the default location this time.Let's go up a level here.Step into User Presets.Jump into Adobe.And this time, I'm going to put thisin that Image - Utilities.Now, this is technically not an Adobe one,but I'm going to call this Keyingand rename it Super Key,so it does all four things.

Not too bad.Turn on the Spill Suppression, cleans it up.And let's crop that footage layer.We'll select the Rectangle Tool here and double click.Grab the Mask, and press Command T,and I could just get rid of that overspill.Not bad.Add that adjustment layer.Layer, New, Adjustment Layer.Come over to those Effects & Presets,and type in the word blue.

There it is.Regular Presets, User Presets.Cool Blue Spot.You'll also notice that recent presets were here,so I could browse presets to find them,and this would allow me to choose themand grab them and add them on pretty simply.Let's just highlight that layer so it's active.And you'll see Apply Animation Preset,which will pop up a dialog so you can navigate.Or Animation, Recent.

And there are all the ones that we've recently used.There's that Cool Blue Spot.I'm going to sample that color here to Leave,let's just turn layer off for a second.Sample the purple so it updates.And turn it on.And there's that look.And remember, everything's tweakable.So, if you decide you want to pull the lights downon that curve a little bit, no big deal, you can recover.But there's that look that I created on the other sideapplied to this new piece of footage.

That cool blue tint with the blue spot being left behind.And you see that that makes it easy to reuse effects.Now, what you saw there were two different examples.The first was a custom color grade.The other was a better keying recipe.Now these are easy to save.One I'm going to store in my user folderbecause it's really something I came up with.And the other I'm just going to put in the default locationbecause it's a slight modification on Adobe's keying recipe.Once you get the hang of these,they're pretty easy to use.

Ability to choose animationand simply view anything you recently used.This is a huge timesaver.Now that you know how to find these presets,you're in pretty good shape.But let's talk about a couple of management strategiesto make things easier.

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Released

10/9/2015

In video, saving time on the simple tasks means you've got more energy left for the hard ones. Luckily, many effects and animations can be automated in After Effects, thanks to its robust effects and presets engine. In this course, you'll learn how to use existing presets, design custom effects and save them as presets, and save time with a variety of built-in animations that most users miss. Author Rich Harrington also shows how to install third-party presets, share and back up your presets, and organize them on your hard drive.